Raising the SS TAX cap while KEEPING THE BENEFITS CAP is STEALING. It is grand larceny. Granted, Medicare already commits similar stealing-- but it's not a retirement plan, and you aren't entitled to money (just health care).

Personally, anyone voting to lift the cap entirely should be subject to the death penalty under similar statutes as govern drug kingpins.

Here’s what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins “Country First” buttons on his man titties and chants “U-S-A! U-S-A!” at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.

The FICA tax is a regressive tax no matter how you slice it, since its a flat rate.

Well it certainly isn't a complete cure-all; I think partially funding the system out of the income tax would be a better idea, instead. I think that would make more sense than the payroll tax anyway, which is completely nonrefundable for the poor.

But raising the cap would eliminate the crisis of the system going broke, that's what I meant.

Obviously Americans have to decide what kind of system they want for our nation's future; as of right now, raising the SS cap seems to have more popular support than does Bush's plan. Just an observation.

When the social security program was conceived, the deliberate intention was not to make it into a welfare program. That is why the amount to be received was tied, however loosely, to the amount that was paid in over the worker's lifetime.

The cap is there because the cap corresponds to the highest level of benefits that can be received from social security. A person who earns at or above the cap for a certain period of time will earn the maximum level of benefits, but cannot earn more benefits, no matter how much his/her earnings were over the cap amount.

Removing the cap effectively makes social security into a welfare program, at least partially. This goes against the original intention of the program, which was emphatically not to be a welfare program, with all the political liabilities that go along with that. In my opinion, to make social security into a welfare program is a very dangerous path, and the originators were wise to reject this concept.

The solution is to move in the opposite direction. To take control of the return earned on social security away from the politicians, who have utterly mismanaged the program for decades.

It makes more sense to means test benefits than raise the cap, because as Dazzleman said raising the cap makes SS a welfare program.

In any case, we're going to realize eventually that crisis or not, our system is levying high taxes and yielding low returns. Any move to raise taxes or lower returns only exagerates this problem, it doesn't solve it.